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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I got a 1 on both physics 1 and 2, and a 3 on physics C mechanics. I am now going into a PhD program for physics at a school you’d approve of.

It’s a slow journey and you shouldn’t expect that people who do well in the beginning are actually better at physics. Linear algebra is a difficult class in general and makes sense to a lot of physics majors when they take upper division quantum mechanics. Don’t kill your daughters dreams just because she isn’t perfect.[/quote]

Thank you for writing this.  I have a kid like this. She killed her humanities classes in high school (5’s on what seems like a zillion APs) but struggled with calc BC and Physics C. But decided she wanted a physics degree and is pursuing at a very hard school. Lots of tears. Much better grades in her intro humanities classes. Her math isn’t as strong as others and she isn’t fast so tests in physics and problem sets take a long time.  But she has found a lab that she loves and is well supported there. Publishing (along with her grad student and PI) in high impact journals. Participating in undergrad clubs. Still determined to go to graduate school in physics and really loving the subject matter. Given her research record, she probably will have some good options for grad school.  Her thorough, slow, methodological personality is better suited to research and persevering in open ended problems than class work, it seems. We have never been anything but encouraging and I think that was helpful to her when she would call struggling.

Support your kid. She may take a couple of classes and decide it’s not for her.  She may switch out to engineering. She may go in a completely different direction. But college is the place where she should figure out if she 1. Likes the subject and 2. Is willing to do the work to get the degree. [/quote]

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